The serial entrepreneur in me is screaming “GET IT DONE” constantly, but my hare-brained personality needs to be a little more turtle-ish for this one.

It’s been just over a month since the Kickstarter successfully funded and it feels like an eternity – but that’s good! I think. So much has happened, and mostly good things! Some of it will be kept up in these posts (blog.sparqee.com) and others in the forums (forum.sparqee.com) since they may be technical pieces. So what’s happened?

CELLv1.0: On to the fun stuff – the board! All the final designs are done, the boards are here, the parts are here, the new paste is in, the masks are here, the certifications are lined up, now it’s build/test time!

Logistics: Logistics has actually been quite a time suck and is one of the most frustrating parts. Making sure everyone gets what they expect, didn’t under or overpay and if they did, correct it. Correcting credit-card processing errors, picking dev points, dealing with Kickstarter’s VERY limited console (BTW: for the survey Kickstarter gives you radio buttons or fill-ins, that’s it! AND every field MUST be answered… not my fault people, just the nature of the beast.)

Distributor: Yep, I’m Hare-brained thinking that I’d have a big announcement for everyone already… it’s coming, but for a sneak peak, we’re working with a great distributor and really excited where things are headed. Contracts are in the works.

You know how this post is called “Doing it right,” well, one bad thing about going with a distributor is that we have to do it right rather than quick. For the longevity of this project, product, and thus company, there are some delays happening. We put some “slop” into the schedule to provide for just these types of circumstances to deliver on time, but the wiggle room is slowly running out. Once we get the contracts in place and solid quotes back from the distributor’s assembly house (It’s thrilling to be in the big house BTW) then we’ll be able to set a more definite timeline.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re still blazing forward and can see the finish line – it’s comin!

As always, we appreciate all the support of the community that helped push this project, product, and company to the next level. We look forward to getting the product out ASAP and are fully focused on providing the best product we can!

Previous Kickstarter projects have provided usable, open source Bluetooth and WiFi technologies, but the SparqEE CELLv1.0 is the first to bring cellular to the table.

“I’ve been on plenty of projects where a simple cellular connection would have been a game changer to have,” says SparqEE co-founder Chris Higgins, “and as far as the CELLv1.0 not having an on-board processor, a critique I recently received, every year there’s a better MCU but I constantly reuse my breakout boards. We wanted to give people something they could use on any project well into the future and on any board, not just the current rev of the Arduino or Raspberry Pi.”

The CELLv1.0 kit will include the cellular board, a jumper board to allow Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or any development board, an antenna, and power cable. As per Kickstarter fashion, SparqEE also offers several dev boards and shields such as GPS, accelerometer, relay, and a connection to the Arduino and Raspberry Pi, made available through Kickstarter’s donation reward system.

“The CELLv1.0 is a completely open source project that goes several steps further. Not only are all the design files, schematics, layouts, and code available, but we’re providing a complete ecosystem for users including a freely available server and software available using a simple and straightforward RESTful API.”

SparqEE was recently asked about how the cellular providers played into this project: “With M2M applications and anything cellular, the providers are one of the biggest hurdles. Since our goal is to make cellular as ubiquitous as bluetooth and wifi we needed to take care of everything, including the providers. So we put together a SIM card offering that works anywhere in the world, is the easiest to setup, no minimums, and is the lowest cost I’ve ever seen. For example, for a tracking application we’re working on, a 1MB plan is going to run at about $2/month” – check out SparqEE.com/products/sim for more info.

The team is looking forward to their debut on Kickstarter and is already working towards building the community and support surrounding the CELLv1.0.

For more information on the SparqEE CELLv1.0, visit the Kickstarter page here or feel free to contact SparqEE at info@sparqee.com There’s also a community help forum available at forum.sparqee.com where you can share your projects and ask for help.

Although my favorite movie of all time is Iron Man #1 (yes, I do want to be Tony Stark, or Elon Musk… he’s close enough at this point), I don’t agree with one of his most memorable quotes – “Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk.”

Unfortunately, in real life, babies don’t hit the ground running. As I’ve recently learned from Liam, it’s more of a progression from simply lifting their head, turning over, crawling, to eventually walking, and only much later is running in the mix. This is true for most things really, well, any situation I can think of.

It’s true for SparqEE too. We need to start working our way forward, from the ground up. It’s not practical to expect to waltz into a VC’s office and be offered a $1M to work on your product… believe me, I’ve tried, it doesn’t work no matter how good your idea is.

If you want to be funded you’ve either got to 1) have past successes or 2) have somebody of HIGH reputation on your team. The first is just a counter-intuitive chicken-egg scenario while the second is often impractical.

So how then? Well, we’re going after #1, but we’re going to do it from the ground up – a Kickstarter project to get our initial financing and then explode forward from there.

The Journey begins August 20, 2013 at 11am!

As I sit here watching the Colbert Report I’m reminded of why we started SparqEE.

SparqEE was founded on the same basis of George W. Bush’s 3rd and 4th, I mean Obama’s 1st and 2nd, presidential campaign promise of “Change.” Except in our case, we’re actually executing our campaign promise!

We know that businesses and technology can Change the world for the better – for the benefit of mankind while being better for everyone involved. SparqEE welcomes any motivated persons out there who want to make great technology and be rewarded for it – we get everyone’s skin in the game by sharing in the fruits of our labor through shared equity!

This isn’t your daddy’s corporation where only the execs get rich… we all share in the benefits of our company, while sharing the benefits of our company with the world.